


Lost My Mirth

by AsbestosMouth



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Addiction, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Destructive Behaviours, Fluff and Angst, Going on holiday by mistake, Hurt/Comfort, Idly Fantasising About Doing Sex Things To Another Character, Implied/Referenced Torture, Intervention, M/M, Mental Health Issues, POV Second Person, Past Abuse, Ramsay is his own warning, References to Drugs, Robb Stark is a Gift, Sex Addiction, Withnail & I inspired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2019-01-06 21:34:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12219378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsbestosMouth/pseuds/AsbestosMouth
Summary: Theon and Robb find themselves on holiday. By mistake. With enough drugs to sink a small flotilla of Ironborn ships, the finest wines imaginable, and some cake.Or: Theon's been self-destructing ever since he escaped Ramsay, and Robb just wants to help pick up the pieces.





	Lost My Mirth

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not quite sure where this came from, but it sort of burst forth like something from John Hurt's chest. 
> 
> Please read the tags. The Ramsay stuff is in the past, so you're safe there even if parts are alluded to, but Theon's pretty fucked up. Explicit for subject matter - it's actually really fluffy given the subject matter. Hmm.
> 
> This is all written in second person present tense.

* * *

 

 

“We have come,” you say with the sort of gallows humour you often employ in certain situations, “on holiday. By mistake.”

Robb shakes his head, curls gleaming red and glossy in the lamplight, and you wonder, for the seventeenth time that day, why you’ve not fucked yet. You’re both healthy young men with urges, and you, yourself, indulge these urges with quite a number of people, and Robb’s definitely shagged people - he has to have had, because Robb? Best looking man in the North, and that’s no bias, that’s fact - so the question remains.

Why hasn’t Robb ploughed you like the proverbial field?

Or, no. Why hasn’t you managed to seduce Robb into aforementioned furrowing, seeding, all that farming metaphor? Or you can do Robb. You’re not fussy and always easily switchable. Even if Greyjoys do not sow, apparently, you’re really fucking good at it.

Robb’s perfect though. He’s broad and dependable, with a mischief about his grin, and you’ve fancied him for years. Ever since you met, a decade before. You’d been taken away from his parents due to, well, Greyjoy shit, and the Starks, all moral crusaders for good, fostered you.

You walked into the grand entrance hall of their castle - fucking castle, not even Dad had a castle and he was a major crime boss - and realised that not only were the Starks wealthy and upstanding, but they ranged from the sublime to the ridiculously hot. Even the kids were cute; Rickon with his shaggy hair and button nose, Bran all small and bookish-nerdy and thinking he had some sort of second sight (which he has, but you prefer not to think about that. Fuck knows what the kid sees in their futures, but in yours there’s probably a boatload of illegal substances and rather less illegal sex), Arya tiny and steel-sharp and desperately hanging off Jon’s arm. Sansa’s beautiful in the way of porcelain, and you never quite want to touch as she might shatter. Jon? Arse of legend, lips of gods, hair of emo. You dislike each other intensely, but the hate sex could be fantastic and seeing him crack even better.

Robb. Fourteen then, to your almost sixteen, about the same height but wider built, and he’d come forward without prompting and slung an arm around your lean shoulder and bade you welcome to Winterfell.

Cat shares Jon’s sentiment toward you, even if she loathes the bloke. Ned, honourable to a fault, tries his best, but he’s not Dad. For a long time you hated him, and sometimes still do. He isn’t Balon, he isn’t a Greyjoy, what is this big stoic Northerner doing daring to tell an Ironborn what you could and couldn’t do? What sort of shit was that?

Robb saw a playmate. Jon got jealous. You wondered, idly as you got older and those foster brothers got handsome and pretty - and legal - in turn, about how insane a threesome could be.

Yeah.

You’re fucked up, you are. You know it. You’re the sort of person who wants attention, craves it, needing to feel like you’re something. Caught between Greyjoy Mafia pretensions and the simple goodness of the Starks you feel like you’ve got to prove something, but no idea what. Do you go full Euron? Does you go for the stability that Ned and Cat try and provide? You twist between both, infuriating and frustrating in turn, but your changeable nature and whim make you a source of fascination to some. You try to be cool. Sex, drugs, looking the part in those skinny jeans and Doc Martens while cultivating the sort of rock and roll image that you think both suits and projects the image you want to show the world.

Robb laughs at you. Calls you a try hard.

Robb remembers that scrawny lost almost sixteen year old kid who lost his Mum to cancer, his Dad to prison, and ended up abandoned by the rest of the Greyjoys because of Euron. Asha keeps in touch, when she can, but she’s at the other end of fucking Westeros with her hard-faced girlfriend, so seeing her doesn’t happen.

You’re less lonely with Robb about, less caught in the middle of worlds that don’t really meet. The North might be harsh and unforgiving but the people are warm underneath their taciturn natures. Decent. If the North could be summed up in one thing, it’s Ned Stark. All that heroic honesty underlain by a strength that you really don’t understand. Alien indeed.

How can someone be that good? It’s fucking suspicious. Ironborn aren’t like that. They’re bastards, murderers, pillagers. They reave their way through life with bloody joy and carnal pleasure, and fuck the consequences. Death? Yeah. What is already dead never dies. The Drowned God tells you that, even if you feel outside of Its influence having been on the mainland for more than half a decade.

Going back to Pyke, with Euron around? Almost as stupid as fucking Ramsay Bolton, and you’ve learned your lesson with that one. One day your hands might work properly once more, and you’ll pick up archery again, and be able to wank without feeling that tightness where skin used to be, where bone never quite mended true. One day the scars on your body might fade, but Ramsay could see that fucked-upness and added to it with the care and obsession that any sado masochistic psychopath would be proud of. Mentally you’re worse than ever, and even worse than that, parts of the abuse you bloody loved.

“We’re on holiday. It’s not a mistake.” Robb lights a candle from the oil lamp, and you want to fuck his face. Candlelight looks good on him. Everything looks good on him. Apart from you.

“We’ll be murdered by psychopathic Dreadforters. They’re all inbred around here.”

“Explains Ramsay,” Robb says, that easy smile remaining on his lips. He knows a little bit. Not much. Just enough to be careful around certain subjects, but not so much that it makes things seriously weird. You’re the sort that internalises, self-flagellates. Other people don’t deal with your shit, that’s yours. Your secret. “Explains everything.

“Shit. It’s like _Deliverance_. I’ll be buggered to death as I’m the pretty one. You’ll have to save me.”

“I’ll be getting the fuck out of here and leaving you to your pitiful fate.”

“Like hells!” You poke Robb in the shoulder, feeling muscle and sinew. If he worked out, he could be seriously built in the shoulders given his breadth. He’d not hurt anyone though. Unless pushed. Then he’s a redheaded wrathful angel, all sexy and terrifying in turn. You’ve always thrown the barbs, the verbal arrows with your sharp tongue. Robb picks up the pieces, makes sure you don’t get too hurt - even if you know you deserve it for many reasons. Crave it. You’re a Greyjoy. You’re damned from birth. “You’re too much like Ned. You’d come racing in to rescue me, like I’m the princess.”

“You’d be too busy loving being fucked to need rescuing, you twat.”

You tilt your head, grin broadly. You’ve got better teeth than Robb, which is still a victory even if minor. Blue eyes meet your own muddy grey, an auburn eyebrow arches, before Robb breaks out the dope.

You let him roll because his hands work properly, and have the first few drags off the joint, before nicking the thing from his lips and inhaling. The paper sticks to you skin, damp from Robb’s mouth, and you merely laugh through smoke as you’re bitched at for his thievery.

His saliva tastes too good.

Fuck.

 

* * *

 

It’s fucking cold in this cottage.

You both end up in the same bed, huddling together in blankets and all the spare warm clothing you have, and the torture of being so close to him tends towards the sweet in a way. Robb curls up into a ball, and as he’s heavier than you, and bred to withstand the ridiculous Northern weather, runs warmer. Having him in bed is like having a really sexy hot water bottle, but one you can’t fuck, because he’s technically your foster brother still and does Robb even like men? It’s something not broached before, but he’s fine with you screwing both genders.

You’re quite in love with him, yes, but you’re also far too aware of your own fucked upness.

At least, it’s the nearest to love that you can think of. Wanting to be him figures, and wanting to have him. Fuck and be fucked, sure. Jealousy that Robb doesn’t belong to you, but then he’s never really been with anyone seriously. Jeyne Westerling for a year or so, but that turned long-distance and fizzled out when he went to university. A girlfriend here and there, but not serious. A bit of fun? Marvelling at how someone so good looking can exist. Jealousy that you’re not as honourable or noble as him, or will ever will be, because you’re a skinny little fuck from Pyke who plays dangerous games with sex and drugs. One day Robb will be a company director, with the perfect wife, children, house, the whole shitshow.

You?

Jealousy personified, but lacking the Lannister green envious glare.

You’re forever Theon Greyjoy, who, let’s face it, is a fuck up semi-junkie who wants to lose himself in sex and drugs not because it makes him cool and interesting but because he wants to forget, for a little while, all the shit. Euron told you once, before the Greyjoy empire tore apart and your once beloved uncle sold your less beloved Dad to the authorities - and that backfired for the powers in charge because Euron? Far worse than Balon ever was. He told you that you fuck or get fucked in this life. He rested his hand on your shoulder, grinning manically, told you that there’s a reason that what is dead might never die, before he disappeared off to terrorise Essos for another six months.

Euron. He takes speed to calm himself down. That’s how fucked he is.

Asha got out lightly. She’s just a lesbian who likes brothels and leather clad Dornish women. That’s pretty classy compared to the rest of you.

You sometimes want the world to burn, but as long as you’re the one with the match, and your Dad tells you you’re a good Ironborn, and an even better Greyjoy. As long as you belong somewhere, not caught between worlds.

From somewhere in your head Ned Stark gives you one of his caring but censuring glances, and you feel irrationally guilty/pissed off because of it.

That’s partially why you lead Robb - good, honourable, but willing to be corrupted at some level Robb - utterly astray. He won’t go to clubs with you to get laid, and he doesn’t drink that much, but he’s quite dedicated to the range of lesser drugs you tempt him with. Dope here, a pill or two there, and you’re cuddling together, giggling and talking of all the random shit that comes into your heads. He makes the best chocolate brownies and cookies, and sometimes he doesn’t even put any shit in them. Sometimes they’re just there for when the munchies strike.

He keeps you on some sort of even keel. When Robb isn’t there, and there are times when you’re apart and it feels like you’re drowning like your ancestors worshipping the Drowned God, everything gets more? More more. You use more heavily and less socially. You feel like Renton in _Trainspotting_ , half-expecting that baby to be crawling across the ceiling. You take more risk, have grandiose ideas of overthrowing Ned Stark and replacing him with the Greyjoys to make Dad finally proud. In the light of day that’s a shit idea, as Euron’s nominally head of the clan now Dad’s in prison, and that’d mean him swanning around Winterfell about like some ‘80s power metal reject that’s embraced BDSM.

Then Robb goes to university. Leaves you.

You fuck Ramsay Bolton and end up even worse than you were before. He’d not quite broken you enough to put you back together in a manner of his own choosing, and sometimes you think that it would have been far better for Ramsay to see this transformation through, change you into what he demanded, than leave you strung-out and not even fitting in your own head any more. At least someone would like you, the little voice in your head says, all venom. At least someone would want you.

With Robb around you don’t get that. You use less. You smile more. You don’t end up in orgies somewhere, covered in bodily fluids, off your face and wanting it to destroy you. You’re the Theon Robb deserves really, without the darkness that lives in what can laughingly be referred to as your soul. No Greyjoy has a soul. Balon gave them all to the Drowned God years ago. With Robb there you’re charming Theon. You’re cool Theon. Flirty Theon who acts as his best friend and sometime jealous wingman. You’re the Theon who teases him about being ginger but wants to run your fingers through his curly hair. The one who would die for him, if you weren’t such a coward, and even now terrified that if you throw your lot in with the Starks and become not a Greyjoy then you’re nothing at all.

“Naked cuddling keeps you warmer,” you mention off-handedly, tucking your cold-aching hands under Robb’s sweater and making him shriek.

“You’re always cold. You’ve lived in the North for how long and you’re still soft.”

“Yeah, Robb. Call the Ironborn the soft one.” You squeeze lightly, over the very slight layer of softness that happens in the winter - like hibernation, it’s soothing and relaxing and you like the give of flesh and the promise of being cuddled - and Robb kicks you in the shin with a heel.

Robb’s taller, but not by much. You’re the big spoon but not like a rucksack on the back of a lost tourist.

You’ll wake up with your cock hard against his round arse, and have to go and piss before jerking off. Others would be embarrassed, but it’s part of Theon Greyjoy that you pretend not to give a shit.

The urge to slowly grind against him, feel those muscular buttocks part slightly as you rut against the jersey fabric of his tight boxer briefs? A given. Seducing sleepy Robb would be piss easy, but you don’t.

You’re not good enough for him. Not before, but especially not after Ramsay. You’re a creature, this creature with a fucked up head that doesn’t deserve anyone as good and decent and noble as Robb Stark. Sometimes you hate him; hate bred from want, and love, and helplessness, and wanting to be something, everything, to the one person in the world that never turns you away. Despite everything. Sometimes you wonder if Robb would still love you - friend, always friend, fuck - if you slaughtered his little brothers, murdered his sisters, tore his life to shreds for the attention. You could never go through with it as you couldn’t hurt Robb like that. Not the kids. Robb. Robb’s heart and soul, Robb’s everything.

A Greyjoy always wants what is better, then drags them to their level with spite, and salt, and bitterness.

“Get your cold feet off my leg, Greyjoy.”

“Make me.” Easily said, and then you’re on your back with Robb over you, holding your wrists over your head.

You flinch, and he swears softly, sits back on your hips. Lets your hands go. You’re not good with being held down these days.

“Shit. Sorry.”

It’s easier to grin up at him and pretend you don’t get the Fear that turns you into a frightened shell of a man. It’s better to pretend that you’re still not healthy, and he doesn’t know half of what happened in Ramsay’s little torture studio. You need to be strapped down, made to do things, but that’s a sick craving born from clever conditioning. Even though you hate it, and Ramsay, you still react in patterns he created when he tore your mind open and planted his own sick agenda in there.

It took him holding a flaying knife to your hard cock and telling you, loving and sweet, that he was going to cut your balls off that finally got into your thick, stupid, fucked-up Greyjoy addled skull that you needed to get the fuck out of Dodge.

“Sorry,” Robb repeats, that puppyish look making him too beautiful, too involved, and you laugh at him.

“Looks like I kicked your dire wolf.”

“Look,” he starts, a solemnity that’s all Jon wrapping about him, and you tense. “Theon. You can talk to me about things, if you want. You know that, right? You don’t have to be strong all the time.”

Your hand finds his cheek, patting gently. “And let you know how boring I actually am? I’ve got a carefully cultivated Theon Greyjoy thing going on. I can’t spill anything to you, because you might fuck off and find someone else to go on holiday with.”

Robb has nice hands. They’re not too big, or small, but they’re pure Goldilocks - just right. He keeps his nails nice, and Sansa got him hooked on cocoa butter moisturiser. You’ve come so many times thinking of those strong dependable fingers trailing over your body, of them opening you up. Of sucking on them as Robb pounds into you and tells you that you’re a whore, but you’re his whore, and he loves you.

There’s nothing wrong with being a slut. Fuck slut shamers. You and Oberyn Martell are as one on this.

“You know what I mean.” His fingernail touches a ridge of scar tissue on your index finger, where they put the skin graft.

“I’m fine.”

He doesn’t believe you.

Robb never does.

 

* * *

 

“If I had my bow,” you grumble, “I’d shoot us some rabbits.”

“If you had your bow,” Robb adds, “I’d be cheering you on.”

Despite the easily consumable food in the house, all plastic-wrapped and just add hot water, you’re hungry enough and not so stoned enough to crave something’s flesh. There’s a farmer nearby who sells produce, but you can’t be arsed. Why be a Greyjoy, Westerosi Champion Under 21 Archer, if you can’t go and shoot the shit out of some innocent bunnies.

Sansa would die. She’s mostly vegetarian these days when Arya tormented her about the horrors of factory farming. Clegane, her massive megalith boyfriend, looks like he eats half a cow daily, so how the Old Gods -

The Drowned God do they get on, you correct yourself.

You’ve lived in the North too long.

Dad would have you killed for becoming localised. Becoming something less than Greyjoy.

“I’m so bloody hungry.” Robb gets out the camping stove, finds the kettle, fills it with the crisp clear water that comes from a local spring straight to the tap. It’s so clean it makes Winterfell, eco-tastic Winterfell, feel filthy in comparison. “Pot Noodle?”

“Fuck. Yes. I need something hot and salty in my mouth,” you reply without really thinking about it, because that’s how you reply to ninety percent of all conversation. With innuendo and filth.

It’s a shield more than anything else.

 

* * *

 

Robb suits this village, with the quaint cobbled streets and ancient tavern, the buildings grey grim and so North it hurts. You both decided on a day trip being the best idea ever when off your heads the previous evening, even if, in the grey drizzle of a Northern day, it seems shit. He brings warmth with his gorgeous hair, and better smile, and the villagers of both genders straighten up a little as he radiates his patented Stark quality.

“Cheese?” you call from a corner. In contrast you’re wrong there, and you feel it. Too sharp. Too angular. Too obviously Ironborn with your sea-mud eyes and accent. The clothes don’t help, as skinny jeans and Docs haven’t quite hit this forsaken corner of Westeros, and you’re being eyed warily, or censoriously, or, more gratifyingly, with fascination.

Robb, deep in conversation about the best wines available to humanity, looks up and your heart smashes itself. All snug in a woollen pea coat, a Cat Stark knitted scarf keeping his ears warm, he’s even more fuckable than ever. He’s the acceptable end of young and attractive in the country, like he knows to shut gates and how to walk toward oncoming traffic when pavements don’t exist. He’s every inch a local squire while you, in your battered black leather jacket and boots, slim and lean and alien, are anything but.

On Pyke they’d see Robb as soft, and easily broken. They’d just see his wide blue eyes, his plump lips, the neatly kept stubble that ventures towards beard. On Pyke they’re more like you; leathery and salty and fucked-up. Robb would be a salt wife in half a week, and the thought goes straight to your cock.

“Cake for me, I think. Get some cheese if you want, though?”

“Nah. Fuck cheese.”

The old woman behind the counter, who looks like she’s not had anyone shove their cock in her dusty vag for at least three decades, gives you an appalled glare. You grin back, pick cake, bring it over, slide your arm around Robb’s waist and rest your chin on his shoulder.

“Behave,” he tells you, half-fond.

“Yes Daddy. I’ll be good for you.”

“Apologies for my friend,” he tells the old woman, who stares at you both as if you both don’t belong and you feel that vicious happiness that Robb’s all yours again, and doesn’t fit in anymore. “He was dropped on his head a lot when he was young.”

“You can punish me later,” you add, your grin at Evil Levels.

 

* * *

 

“Why are we here?” you ask. You’ve managed to get a fire to light, despite the chimney smoking, and you’re drinking a really good sour Dornish out of the bottle. Robb, classier than you in all ways, uses a mug for his Arbour Gold. The firelight turns his hair to flame, and you want to burn yourself to death in those glowing embers. “Was it the benzos?”

Robb shakes his head. “Phenodihydrochloride Benzelex. The Embalmer.”

“Remind me never to buy off Jaqen. Ever.”

“You didn’t buy,” Robb reminds you. “You never buy.”

“I’m so pretty I can’t help it if people give me free drugs.”

“Yeah.” Blue eyes find you. “You are.”

Silence reigns for a while as you smoke, and drink, and eat cupcakes. They’re fucking good ones, as well, with bits of crunchy sugar on top, and chocolate ganache. After all, you indulge yourself with everything. Sex, booze, drugs, why not cake?

You squint woozily at the half-eaten thing, dip your finger into the chocolate, owlishly aim at Robb, and smear it on the tip of his nose.

“How’s that coming off then?”

Leaning forward, you slither your tongue over the cute snubness, lightly dusted with freckles.

“Can I suck your cock?”

“Theon…we’ve been through this.” His sigh moves mountains.

We have? You frown, reach for your wine, fumble, and Robb catches the bottle before it spills all over the floor.

“Every time you’re this fucked up, you try.”

“I do?” Seriously?

Maybe you should do fewer drugs? You can’t remember that at all. But not remembering is the entire point, so maybe not.

“It’s not healthy,” Robb adds. The tenderness in his voice, the care, the worry, and you sit back on your heels, snort out a hopefully genuine seeming laugh to make this all go away. “I know why you take so much, even if you don’t tell me what happened. I just wish I could help you more. Since Ramsay happened, you’re different, and it scares the shit out of me.”

You keep the grin going, shake your head, aware that you’re probably looking manic now.

“If you’d just let me in-”

“Your arse?” you add, helplessly, and Robb pushes back, takes his bottle of wine, and disappears. The line of his back has a rigidity that you’ve seen before when you’ve pissed him off, or upset him, and maybe you should go and apologise? But that means having a conversation that you’re unwilling to have because you’re a fucking coward, and you’re too drunk, and too strung out, and all you want to do is fuck and drink and smoke until you can’t remember your name, let alone everything else in your shitty existence.

 

* * *

 

“Sorry,” Robb mutters.

Your head feels like a pig shat in it, and you wrap your arms around your skull, trying to stop the daylight, the sounds of birds fucking twittering away, the fresh air. Fuck the fresh air.

He’s brought you a bacon sandwich, because apparently you’ve got bacon hidden away and didn’t even know, a mug of tea with so much sugar that even your dentures start aching, and wraps a blanket around your shoulders.

“Sorry too.”

“I’m worried about you. That’s all.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“Since Ramsay-”

“Robb. I’ve got a hangover, and I feel really shitty. Can we not do this now?”

Robb doesn’t take no for an answer, the cunt.

One of those sexy warm hands finds the back of your frozen neck, thumb rubbing circles. “Why did you think we were coming on holiday?” he asks, his tone gentle but also determined. You hate it as much as you respect it. Robb teacher voice. It should bring sharp flashing images of pervy sex to you, but you’re feeling so rough that the comfort doesn’t come.

“It was a mistake,” you point out as you slowly turn to mush under his carefulness.

“It was so we could spend a bit of time together. Maybe see if you’d talk to me if there wasn’t anyone else around.”

“So it’s manipulation then?”

Robb smiles. “I’m not above that. I lured you out here with promises of being fucked up for an entire weekend and a bit, but there was always more to it.”

You give him the full force of betrayal, which is hypocritical to the max, because if anyone betrays anyone around here it’s you. You forsook your family roots. You’re more North than Ironborn now. You’ve been in love with Robb for years, yet you can’t even explain what Ramsay did to you, in all ways, because you’re terrified that when he sees how broken, how fucked up, how disgusting you are, he’ll leave you. Just like Ramsay told him - they’ll all leave you, apart from me, he’d said as he pulled the third toe nail, kissing and biting up your thigh. You couldn’t even scream because you’d torn your voice up that much, just sobbed as he got you to associate the pain with pleasure as he fucked you open and tore you into bloody pieces in the name of remaking you in His image.

You don’t deserve Robb Stark.

“I don’t deserve you,” you tell him, and your voice trembles, just a little. You’re sick, and want to throw up, and that hand doesn’t leave your neck. “I’m.”

A breath, another, Robb solid against you.

“Don’t leave me,” you say. “Even though I’m fucked up.”

“Of course you’re fucked up. You’re you.” Arms come around you, pull you about like you’re easily moveable, knees coming either side of your hips as you rest against Robb’s chest. He just hugs you. He’s an affectionate sort, with those he’s comfortable with. With the other kids. With his parents. With you.

Shit.

“Theon. Talk to me. Please. I’m losing you. I can’t stand seeing you like this.”

“Thought I hid it fucking well. I’m a fantastic actor-”

“Reduced to the status of a bum,” he adds, nose in your hair.

“And fuck you too, Gingerbread.”

“I mean it. I’m losing you, my best friend in the whole fucking world. You’re seriously trying to kill yourself, I can see it. You ask me not to leave you, but you’re willing to leave me. Fuck, Theon. You’re being unfair. How can you ask that of me when you’re not willing to do the same for me?” For a fraction of a second the arms slacken, you wait for the desertion, but then they’re shifting, holding you closer, so close that his heart hammers your spine, and if you shifted your arse just a fraction, he could just fuck you here, on the cold stone before a dead fire, where you passed out last night.

“I’m a hypocrite. I’m fucked up. I’m not worth it.”

“Yes you are.”

“Then why won’t you fuck me?” you ask, and that prickling at the corners of your eyes, that cowardice and softness that’s all your fault, because you might be Ironborn but you’re a shit Ironborn as Euron and Dad told you for years, turns into actual treacherous wetness. “If you fuck me it’ll make it better.”

“You’re worth more than a quick fuck.” Robb sighs, sits back. “You’re worth more than you think, than what a lot of people think. Is that what he reduced you to?”

You stay silent, staring at the ash in the hearth.

“You smile the same, you say the same things, but it’s not you under there Theon. It’s not been you for a long time, not since you came out of hospital.”

“Yeah. Torture does that to a guy, you know?”

“Stop deflecting.”

You turn in his arms, because this Is It. Isn’t it? It. This is where you start talking, because otherwise you might lose him, despite what Robb promises, because you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. This is where he sees into your psyche and recoils in horror at the filth that looks back. You’re Ramsay’s creation, mostly, with flickers of Greyjoy, and memories of times where life seemed okay. Sure, you weren’t at your own home, and Cat never liked you, and neither did half of Winterfell because you’re too cocky, cock-sure, and your cock always got you into trouble, and then you always felt ripped in half as the North and the Iron Isles both tried to claim you in their way.

Were you happy then?

You can’t remember the last time you genuinely smiled.

“I deserved it,” you say. Finally. “I deserved it, Robb. Fuck.”

Those big blue eyes of his soften even more, and he touches the rough stubble of your jaw with a finger that shakes only slightly.

 

* * *

 

He takes you to bed, hand in his, tells you to get in and then wraps around you like a shroud.

You like him telling you what to do, on some level.

When you wake up, hours or years later, darkness has fallen and your headache has mostly gone.

 

* * *

 

“You didn’t deserve it.” Robb’s driving as he’s better at it than you, and you’re somewhere on the dual carriageway between the Dreadfort and Winterfell, the road dark and narrow even in daylight. “No one deserves what happened to you.”

“I did. For what I did.”

“And what did you do?” he asks, and he seems genuinely interested.

“I-”

You set your jaw, stare out of the window.

“I betrayed my family by preferring to live with yours. I should be in Pyke picking up the business, but I’ve never been back, not since I came to the North. I’ve betrayed your family because I love them and hate them, because they’re so fucking decent to me, and I want them to fuck off before they realise how screwed up I am and break me more. No one gives me attention, so I fuck my way to it. I’m a whore. I’ve been a cunt to your siblings because I’m jealous of them.”

You’re counting off on your fingers now, the scars livid.

“I hated all of your girlfriends, every single one of them, especially Jeyne fucking Westerling. Why? Because they took me away from you, and you’re the one person out of everything that likes me. No one else does. I’m good for drugs, or cock, or buying drinks. You seem to like me, even though I’m a coward, a seriously shitty person. I wish half the time that Ramsay had broken me, so I’d be his for all time. He’d put too much into what he did to just leave me. He called me his, and I liked it. Robb. I fucking loved it because I had attention, all that attention, focussed on me for once. Not on my Dad, or Euron, or my foster family. On me. I deserved what he did, and I wanted it, and sometimes - a lot of the time - I’ll wank and remember the pain that I deserved. I get off on it. I’m sick. I’m sick, and fucked up, and I don’t deserve you.”

“I don’t like you.” Robb looks over, changes gear. “I love you, you dickhead.”

“Then why won’t you fuck me?” The words he says don’t register. They might, later, but for now you’re fixated on fucking, on sex, on Robb himself.

“Because you’re ill. Bloody hells, Theon! You’ve been tortured, made to think this is all your fault, that somehow you deserve fucking Ramsay Bolton flaying you, mutilating you, doing what he did - and I was there when you were brought in, I heard them talking about what he’d done, all of it. You didn’t know I was, but I didn’t leave you on your own in case you came out of the coma and no one was with you.”

“...but I was in that coma for five days,” you mumble, tucking yourself into a smaller space and not being able to look up at Robb’s anguish.

“And I was there every fucking second! Would someone do that for someone else if they’d done something to deserve that treatment? No, they’d hand them over to the hospital, let them heal alone. They’d not be there waiting for them to wake up, begging them to, would they?”

“Ramsay said-”

“Ramsay,” and that avenging angel strays beyond Robb and into being, and is beautiful and righteous and wrathful, “is a terrible cunt.”

“If I wasn’t ill,” you venture, slowly, “would you fuck me then?”

“Is that what you’re getting out of this conversation?”

“It’s what I get out of every conversation. How likely am I to fuck the person I’m talking to?” It, at least, makes Robb’s mouth twitch with a careful sort of amusement. “Sex is the best attention, and I’m an attention whore.”

“I love you.” The words, and you get them this time around, smash into your head like something Jaqen’s invented, leaving nerve endings and brain cells stinging. “You dickhead. Why couldn’t you just have told me years ago, and we could have worked something out. Why think you couldn’t say anything?”

“Because I’d lose you.” Silently you fumble at the radio, Jimi Hendrix wailing about watchtowers for a split second, before Robb switches it off with a jab of his thumb.

“You’d never lose me. You fucking idiot.”

 

* * *

 

“How’d it go?” Robb says quite casually, though the knuckles of the hand wrapped around the coffee mug are white with pressure. You saunter over, the barista bringing your mocha-choca latte whatever with the five pumps of caramel in a sort of daze, settle in a chair. Under the table your skinny knees meet Robb’s well-built thigh, all warm and safe and tangible.

He touches you sometimes so you know he’s there. Even when you don’t ask. Even when you’re acting and being Theon Greyjoy and not the creature that lives inside you. You rarely thank him for it, but Robb knows.

“Did you know that he’s Jon’s boyfriend?”

Robb raises his eyebrow. You want to lick his eyelid, like a Pyke beach lizard. Starfish his red lashes.

“Sam’s married with a kid.”

You steal the sausage - it’s massive - off Robb’s plate and bite into it after fending off a vicious forking from the upset Stark-ean party.

“Totally Jon’s boyfriend.”

“Jon’s going out with Ygritte.”  
  
“They’re fucking,” you sing-song with a shit-eating grin on your face, before you tear into the processed meat product clenched in your hand. “Wonder who tops? Jon, probably.”   
  
“Theon. Stop talking. Right now.”   
  
Therapy sucks, in a good sort of way. You hate going because it makes you face issues that should have been dealt with a long time ago, maybe when you first came to Winterfell, and you’re pissed off with the Starks and Social Services that they didn’t get you some sort of help back then. Back when you first got into drugs, and sex, and wasted your potential and brain cells on things designed to make you forget. Back when you were sixteen and desperately trying to be cool, and in control, and all you were was a lost kid deserted by those who were blood and taken in by your true family who wasn’t.

Sometimes you cry, and then threaten Sam with death if he tells anyone, but all Dr. Tarly does is smile kindly, giving you tissues and a few minutes to calm down before continuing.

“How’d it go?” Robb repeats.

“Okay. It’s cathartic.”

“And you’re using words of more than two syllables?”

In retaliation you dunk the chewed end of the sausage in Robb’s runny fried egg.

 

* * *

 

The kiss, when it comes, is nice. You’ve had better, sure. More tongue, less emotion, and the electricity of it scares the shit out of you. It feels both dreamlike and real, as if you’re asleep but someone’s mouth is against yours in the waking world, and Robb doesn’t make a thing of it. When you appreciate.

It’s just a brush of lips against yours. You’ve been to visit the dire wolves, and you, you pretentious fuck, recite half-forgotten bits of Shakespeare at them. Of course it starts with the lighter comedies, but descends, as is your wont, to the heaviness of _Macbeth_ and then, finally, you go full _Hamlet_.

“I have, of late, lost my mirth, wolves,” you tell them, aching fingers hooked around the chain link fencing. Without a Stark there they’re killers, but with Robb at your side you’re practically safe. Anyway, you’ve had your fingers sewn back on before. It’d not be a shock if it happened a second time.

“Bloody hells, Theon.”

“Sam Tarly says animals are great therapy,” you snipe back tartly, though your acidity is poured through your broad shit-eating grin.

“Fine, fine. Get on with it. I fucking hated Shakespeare.”

You ignore the philistine - if you’d gone to university you’d have studied Film or English Literature, or both - and wander onward. You tell the wolves that the world is incredible, and beautiful, and those who are in it, human and animal, are also incredible. And then they die. For man delights you not, nor woman either, as all are a quintessence of dust at the end of the day. Everything dies.

Apart from Ironborn, for you’re already dead, you explain.

“You’re a morbid twat,” Robb says.

“I’m your morbid twat.”

That’s when the kiss happens. In front of a pack of dire wolves, in a fairly impressive drizzle that seeps through your leather jacket. There’s a leak in your Doc Martens that makes your too many times broken toes ache, and everything has this grey chill quality that should be ultra depressing. He slips a hand into your wet hair, fingers finding that comforting spot on the back of your neck, and then his mouth, his beautiful mouth, finds yours in the slowest, softest of kisses that you’ve ever experienced. Behind it, far more than the act, lurks something more serious, and sweeter, and more wonderful than you could ever have imagined.

Robb Stark tastes of cigarettes, wine, and hope.

 

* * *

 


End file.
